The Holocene of Sweden – a review

ABSTRACT This paper presents a review on more than hundred years of palaeoenvironmental research in Sweden; from early descriptions of peat and tufa deposits in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to multiproxy transfer function studies in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries CE. Research on Holocene climate variability has a long history in Sweden and many ideas and concepts about changes in temperature and precipitation during the Holocene originated in Fennoscandia. The Holocene climate evolution in Sweden follows a pattern in common for many northern latitude records with a rapid warming starting at the Pleistocene–Holocene boundary at c. 11 650 cal a BP, followed by the middle Holocene thermal maximum between c. 8000 and 5000 cal a BP. A change to colder and wetter conditions starts c. 4000 cal a BP and lasts until the late 1800 s CE. There is evidence for climatic anomalies such as the 8.2 and 4.2 ka BP events and the Little Ice Age (LIA) but only inconclusive evidence for other events, such as the 10.3 ka BP event. The main pattern of Holocene climate and environmental evolution is well known for most parts of Sweden, but the present review also shows that several research questions remain to be addressed.